On "High Fantasy" Settings.

[theweaselking]

In your sterotypical levels-and-classes High Fantasy Setting(tm)[1], where speaking with the dead is as easy as looking them up in the Necrotelecomnicon[2], and a resurrection is just an act of devotion and a chest of gold away, where postcognition and mind reading are facts of life....

...in that setting, how does one commit murder? And, having committed it, how does one *get away* with murder, assuming determined investigators who have a generous budget?

[1]: Not *specifically* D&D, although that's a perfect example of the type of setting I mean.
[2]: lit. The Book Of The Phone Numbers Of The Dead.

Comments

[benarian.livejournal.com]

I guess it would depend upon the setting.

In the case of using magic to determine affairs of state, such as providing verification of someone lying perhaps, there has to be trust that the magician telling you the accused is lying isn't lying himself. Same goes for contacting the dead. You'd have to establish how prevalant magic use is, if its possible for their to be "judical mages" or magic users that assist in civic processes and how frequent or under what qualification their use is mandated. You also have to get magic users to accept some sort of wages in exchange for their services, and have it be better pay than going off to adventure, a difficult task in a high fantasy setting. Really, what is going to make a mage stay and work for the town rather than going after that treasure horde. Certainly some would opt for the safer civic duty life, but would it be enough to make the magic use acceptable by common joe standards? Would a superstitous yokel from the farm accept the testimony from a "witch" in a matter? Maybe, maybe not.

Ressurection is a wholly different critter.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> You'd have to establish how prevalant magic use is,

This is a D&Desque world - Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, for example. Magic is dirt common, there are guilds of mages and temples full of priests, all of whom are willing to cast $SPELL_FROM_MAIN_BOOK for $CALCULATED_PRICE.

In *that* setting, reliable castings of all this magic is easily available. Resurrection is rare because it's EXPENSIVE, but if you have the money, a priest capable of raising the dead *IS* available, period.

Also, we're assuming a D&Desque setting, meaning the magic is trusted and considered reliable, even if the caster is not - and there are so many casters around that even if you can't do it yourself (an unusual thing) then finding someone to do it for you is pretty simple.

Let me rephrase the question slightly:

Assuming that reliable resurrection, speaking to the dead, postcognition, and mind reading are available to the determined investigator, how do you commit murder, make the victim STAY DEAD, and escape undiscovered?

[benarian.livejournal.com]

Soul Jar. You kill the target, its spirit is trapped in the container. They can't be ressurected, raised from the dead or even reincarnated. That, however, takes some magical skill.

There is also ye olde "wish" spell, or a miracle to prohibit the recently deceased from being alive again or contacted.


When I run D&D I tend to make the prevalance of common magic use much less than the perceived "standard". Just having less magic users, or making them less common than the "Monty Hall" standard tends to make for a better fantasy setting.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Burn them to ash, scatter the ashes. Almost all resurrection magics require a fairly complete corpse.

As far as their spirit goes, trap it or unravell it or call upon shades to drag it away to another plane.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Decent ways to make him stay dead - and I suppose I should be specifying what kind of resurrection is possible - Feist-ish body must be intact and whole, 5th Element-style "a few living cells is a survivor", or D&D-esque "any tiny particle, no matter how long dead, is enough - and I can Wish for that particle if I REALLY have to".

So, now that your victim is staying dead, how to escape prosecution and investigation? Assume, as in D&D, that all "I magically make the sensors stop" magic can be countered or overwhelmed, meaning you need a *clever* solution, not a brute-force one.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Alter Self. Illusion. Disguise. Mask.

"Why yes, Bob, I can tell you exactly who we're looking for. They were about five-foot-nine, and they wear a lot of bulky black clothing and dark glasses and their skin is green and greasepaint-y looking. Boy, they'll sure stand out in a crowd!"

[thathatedguy.livejournal.com]

This is why in the world I have been off and on developing for the past few years, Raise Dead is a ninth level spell with an XP component. It costs the caster 100 XP per character level of the person they are raising, including any level adjustments from race.
I am still toying with making it a Domain spell for the Life domain one of the gods has. So, only clerics of the Mother would be able to aise dead, and then, they'd have to be at least 17th level. This would be Raise Dead, not Ressurection or True Ressurection, either. No remains, no raising.
I hate raise dead.
And before the Hippy says anything about how many times my character has been raised in his game, he never once asked for it, except for the whole ghost situation.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Another suggestion that appears to be a very good one, arrived at by dolston and myself - natural causes. Make it seem, to everyone INCLUDING the victim, that the death is due to natural causes. At that point, they won't investigate like it's a murder, speaking with the dead won't do you much good, and they won't raise a guy who's died of natural causes in 99% of fantasy settings because that just won't work.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Eat the soul.

Kill someone nobody cares about.

Kill someone who is cared about, but not by anybody who can get a chest of gold. (*That's* an adventure hook. "Why are you killing orcs?" "I need to save up the money for my sister." "Dowry?" "Resurrection.")

Be too important to prosecute.

Kidnap them and hide them for several months to several years, Collector-style, then kill them after people have stopped looking or caring.

Kill them someplace where no-one's going to look.

Don't let people know they're dead.

Destroy the body.

And if the world has a magical replaying spell which allows anyone who casts it to see what happened when in a specific location, wear a disguise.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Additional random thought: Get the victim possessed or compelled in some way, and have him charge a large group of the local nobility and their bodyguards, shouting "The upper crust are bastards!" and waving something big and spiky.

This will kill him, honest.

[larabeaton.livejournal.com]

As you say, either make it look like natural causes, or else make sure thre vitcim doesn't see you when you commit the crime. Unless disembodied spirits have greater knowledge than they had when they're alive, the killer should get away with the crime.

If the problem then is that the killer could have his mind read, then he could arrange to have his own memory of the event suppressed by hypnosis, or some such device.